The programme designed by
Cine Club’s organizers is imbued with a
literary flavour for the month of
April. Around this time every year, Alcalá de Henares celebrates the
‘Festival of the Word’, an event that brings together a range of cultural views in the city to focus on the world of
literature. The Cine Club has entered the fray by presenting a selection films with links to literary themes. The screens of the
Teatro Salón Cervantes will be showing
‘Coeurs’ (Alain Resnais, 2006),
‘Atonement (Joe Wright, 2007),
‘Fateless’ (Lajos Koltai, 2005),
‘The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’ (Julian Schnabel, 2006) and
‘Infamous’ (Douglas McGrath, 2006).
Three adaptations of best-sellers (‘Atonement’, ‘Infamous’ and ‘The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’), one script written by a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature Imre Kertész (‘Fateless’), and a comedy based on an Alan Ayckbourn play (‘Coeurs’) comprise
Cine Club’s quintet of feature films this month. The films will be screened as per usual in the
Teatro Salón Cervantes, on Wednesdays and Thursdays in two sessions (18.30 and 21.00).
April’s cinema will begin with
‘Coeurs’ (2nd and 3rd), the latest film of octogenarian French director
Alain Resnais, an ensemble piece in which the lives of six characters cross paths in the Parisian neighbourhood of Bercy. This is a
melancholic work about solitude, love and the fleeting nature of time shot with a backdrop of an urban winter. Resnais makes use of theatrical techniques (the script is based on a piece written for the theatre by a British playwright) to set this
story of romantic entanglements in motion, involving a range of characters with no time to turn back or correct their mistakes. ‘Coeurs’ won the Silver Lion at the Venice film festival in 2006, to name one of several awards bestowed on the director of ‘Hiroshima, mon amour’.
The second film is one of this years biggest hits:
‘Atonement’ (9th and 10th), a British production directed by
Joe Wright, also known for ‘Pride and Prejudice’. The Cine Club will present the film under the banner of
‘Literary Passions on the Big Screen’, since it is based on
Ian McEwan’s acclaimed novel. The story begins in England in 1935 on the threshold of the Second World War. Tallis, a young girl with a highly developed imagination and a talent for writing changes the course of the lives of several people when she accuses the lover of her older sister, the son of the housekeeper of the mansion where she lives, of committing rape.
Keira Knightley and
James McAvoy star in this
complex and moving romantic epic, which, having won two Golden Globes, received seven nominations at the last Oscar ceremony, including one for Best Film.
Vanessa Redgrave plays a momentous role in this surprising feature film complete with plot twists and giddying leaps in time.
‘Nobel winner comes to life’ is the label that has been attached to
‘Fateless’ (16th and 17th), the third film on show in April. Hungarian director
Lajos Koltai brings the autobiographical story of a 14 year old Jew to the cinema. Arrested in 1944 during a raid in Budapest, he is then taken to the Auschwitz and Buchhenwald concentration camps. The film is based on a novel by
Imre Kertész, Nobel Prize Winner for Literature in 2002, who was responsible for writing the script of the film. ‘Fateless’ joins the adolescent Jew on his journey to the
heart of the Holocaust, depicted in a way that is at once
demythologizing, cold and emphatic. The young man overcomes the obstacles in his way as naturally as is possible; it’s just a matter of surviving the horrors of concentration camp. Also of note in the credits of this powerful drama is the appearance of Italian composer
Ennio Morricone responsible for the soundtrack.
‘The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’ (23rd and 24th) another film nominated for Best Film at the last Oscar ceremony, is a French production directed by
Julian Schnabel, the man who directed Javier Bardem in ‘Before Night Falls’ in 2001, for which he nearly won a golden statue in the process for his depiction of Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas. This feature film’s namesake can be found on the book written by
Jean Dominique Bauby, which narrates in first person the consequences of an accident in 1985 that leaves the ex chief editor of French magazine Elle totally paralyzed and immobile in bed. The only way he can communicate with the rest of the world is by delicately blinking his left eyelid. That is how he slowly rebuilds his world using the only two abilities left to him:
his imagination and his fantasy. Mathieu Amalric and
Emmanuelle Seigner play the two main roles in a film acclaimed by the critics and awarded prizes such as Best Director at Cannes 2007 and the Golden Globes for Best Film and Best Direction.
The finale of the year’s most literary film program portrays the creation process of one of the most famous cult novels written in the twentieth century.
‘Infamous’, directed by American
Douglas McGrath, tackles the life led by
Truman Capote while he wrote
‘In Cold Blood’. Toby Jones depicts the celebrated journalist and writer, a role for which Philip Seymour Hoffman won an Oscar in ‘Capote’, screened a few years ago. ‘Infamous’ focuses on the investigation that takes Truman Capote to Arkansas, the state in which he meets the two convicted murderers responsible for a
horrific crime. Jones leads a star-studded cast that also includes
Sandra Bullock, Sigourney Weaver, Peter Bogdanovich, Jeff Daniels, Isabella Rossellini and Gwyneth Paltrow.
